Neighbors

Cookies are as much a part of the Christmas season as the turkey is to a holiday feast.

A warm cookie fresh from the oven, baked in a kitchen fragrant with its scent, puts the icing on the holiday experience.

Whether your favorite is as traditional as the ever-popular chocolate chip, as old fashioned as a molasses cookie, or even an old stand-by like the oatmeal cookie, cookies are the delight of children and adults alike.

They add a bit of cheer to holiday gatherings and are a festive touch, whether enjoyed at the office or just around the house.

Many people look forward to Thanksgiving not only as an opportunity to spend time with family and friends, but also as a time to kick off the holiday season with huge comfort food-filled meals and decadent desserts.

And that’s exactly why Kyle Migdol picked this time of year to make a huge lifestyle change.

The holiday now has a different meaning for the Shelbyville native. It was three days before Thanksgiving three years ago when he renounced the traditional gut-busting meal and embraced a stringent weight loss regimen.

Two Shelby County men are still reflecting upon a week they spent in Alaska last month – not on vacation, but as part of a volunteer effort to build a church there.

This was the third time that Bob Walters and Bob Perkins have participated in a project with Samaritan’s Purse, a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization that provides spiritual and physical aid to people around the world.

The experience was much more than just helping to construct a building and parsonage for the Moravian Church in Togiak, Alaska, they both agreed.

As Louisiana fights through the worst floods it’s seen since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, those providing supplies and help to dry the state out are lining up.

But one group in Shelby County is still helping from the last catastrophic flooding through that region.

Displaced by Hurricane Katrina when the storm devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, Taffy is still waiting patiently at the Shelby County Humane Society for a new family – her eyes a warm brown, her tail wagging hopefully every time a family walks by her kennel.

Shelby County and Simpsonville finally celebrated the 4th of July Saturday with separate festivals at Lake Shelby and the Outlet Shoppes of the Bluegrass. The weather held off for the festivties at both places, which were well attended despite having been rescheduled twice.

Randall Stivers took a long drink of his Powerade Zero while pondering the question just put to him – How did he maintain the willpower to loss a third of his body weight in less than a year?

“Life,” he said simply, his eyes – usually full of laughter – candid and somber. “I wanted to live. I wanted to be there for my kids. I don’t want to go back there – I don’t want to go down that path again.”

Children can tug at your heartstrings, especially when they are in need.

Uganda, located along the equator in eastern Africa, is home to 2.3 million orphans, and two women – a mother and daughter from Shelbyville – are doing what they can to provide for a small fraction of them.

After a trip to Uganda last year, Hannah Jones and her mother, Linda Jones, came back home determined to make a dream come true for some children in a village near Jinja, 54 miles east of the capitol city of Kampala.

When artistic inspiration hit Travis Adams, he didn’t blow off the urge.

Instead, he ran with it.

Adams, newly graduated and working in Nashville with a degree in financial economics, came back to Kentucky to pursue his lifelong dream – blowing glass. And now he is preparing for his very first show to display his creations.

The Sentinel-News, since 2008, has honored at year’s end five Shelby Countians we think have had a significant impact on our community during the year. We sought your nominations on our Facebook page, and we believe each person – or team – selected for what we call Shelby County’s Fabulous 5, has in his or her own way left an imprint that merits our honoring and emulating, represents a broad spectrum of a diverse society and truly is one of the best of our best.